


Pseudo-Sucker

by martiallove



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Crack Treated Seriously, Dracula Influence/References, Erik Logic Is The Best Logic, Family Dynamics, Fluff and Humor, Halloween Costumes, Implied Sexual Content, Love Bites, M/M, Party, Pumpkins, Reading, Vampires, attempts at parenting, yes I know it's no longer spooky season
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:47:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28054128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/martiallove/pseuds/martiallove
Summary: With a puzzled stammer at his lip and a finger hovering a photo of a food processor, Peter believed Charles might just, finally, be malfunctioning. “Erik,” he said with incredulous emphasis. “You arenota vampire.”Or: Erik reads Dracula and gets inspired. Charles feigns sanity just in time for Halloween. Peter helps around the house (or, rather, does the exact opposite).
Relationships: Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier
Comments: 3
Kudos: 19





	Pseudo-Sucker

**Author's Note:**

> I may have only read a quarter of Dracula a couple years back, but this came to me some months before Halloween and wouldn't ease off. Quite obviously, it is no longer Halloween. Hopefully it's still enjoyable!
> 
> All the archaic, vampiric quotes belong to Bram Stoker's _Dracula_ (1897). If there are any referential inaccuracies, major apologies. An approximate fourth of a novel can only do so much.

In parenthood, Charles anticipated that sanity be minimised by an average of forty-seven percent.

There were other factors which altered this number. Care of twins, for example, constituted an additional deficit of twenty-two percent. Singular care of twins deducted thirty.

Peter, Erik’s crown progeny, made a near-zero depletion.

You would think that being the fastest individual in the world would account for some sort of self-efficiency, if not for the fact that he was sixteen and obsessed with carbonated drinks and entirely not an infant. But Charles—who always knew professorship alone put him en route to early greying—was convinced, as a weary guardian of his, that he would soon be as grey as Peter to a point of considerable biological relation. Most days, he was willing to bet half the Xavier fortune at the slightest strand of silver.

Because, despite dreaming stupidly of starting an academy, Charles Xavier was _not_ naturally called to fatherhood, let alone to one of a terribly volatile mutant descending from one just as terrible and just as volatile.

Because, sometimes, with the knowledge of a child existing somewhere in his good home, the dust in his study seemed good enough to hibernate in and choke on. His busted armchair felt like a throne. A tethered hardback in his hands a priceless weight. His tea, otherwise, astounding.

Solace, truly, became bliss. And he didn’t know how parents could adhere to any other testament.

One morning, Charles had crept off to his study for this spectacular grail he hailed as privacy. His chair and his book in hand and his mouth taking sips at a quickly (and quietly) made cup of Earl Grey quickly fashioned for him a well-earned paradise. His novel quartered in a matter of thirty minutes, and, by god, was Charles feeling accomplished. It had been a while since he’d read, and he knew small feats like such—a book finished—could, possibly, allow him a tighter grasp around life than the shallow one he already held as somewhat of an untimely father. Responsibilities and teenagers and other terrible things often made the creative quite slack.

In a quiet but sudden descent behind him, Charles heard _Here I am. Here I am. Here I am._ He didn’t flinch.

“Dissertation on genetics?” said Erik.

Charles, in an act, regarded the book foreignly. “You don’t think I’m _that_ insufferable, do you? It’s a novel.”

Erik appeared at his side, handsome and calm in the morning light, beautiful folds in his drowsed face. He lowered himself and pressed his nose to Charles’ and kissed him. “Must be something illicit to have your attention.”

Charles scoffed. He let him gently take his wrist and flop the book over to its cover.

“What is it?”

Charles prodded it upward. “ Dracula. Five years since I’ve read it last. Or not. I may be thinking of Camilla.”

There was a teasing pause on Erik’s behalf. “ _Vampires_ , Charles?”

“My copy of Beowulf is being used as a coaster somewhere.” Rumination punctured his frown. “It was, otherwise, my first pick.”

Erik sat himself on the chair’s arm. “I’ve not read much about vampires.”

“They’re ridiculous, Erik. _Beguiling, sexy creatures of the night._ ” He laughed with a single tut. “Please. Dramatic and blood-lusty, they are, give or take the blood.”

“Really,” said Erik, shifting with slight intrigue.

“Really,” said Charles. “Though today’s standards of what ‘ridiculous’ and ‘lusty’ constitute are far more liberal than of those in this novel.”

“Are they?”

Charles pointed at Erik’s arse. “Their culmination is about to break off my poor chair’s arm, actually. Off you hop.”

A grin, sharply in-character but dimmed by the morning, broke on Erik’s face. He bent down, hovering his mouth over Charles’ cheek. “Our bed accommodates the both of us quite well.”

“We just came from there.”

“We could go back.”

At the flutter of breath on his face, Charles’ lips curved. “I very much doubt I’d be reading if we did.”

Erik’s finger had found its way to Charles’ sweater sleeve and was ascending his skin slowly. This close, Erik smelled of sweetness and cotton. His offer was tempting. _What would you be doing?_ he said.

Charles closed the book on his finger, blue eyes insistent. “You tell me.”

Erik slid his other hand down the chair arm to level them again at their noses. “What—” he planted another quick kiss “—a rather _un-telepathic_ thing to say.”

A suspicious clamour from downstairs jolted them apart.

Charles craned his head around Erik to the ajar door of the study. His eyebrows gathered, which was an instinct he couldn’t tell belonged to being startled or holding the frank disappointment of knowing exactly what a clamour distant from them both meant.

“ _Charles_ ,” boomed a panicked voice.

It was the latter.

Charles dropped his head. Erik exhaled, looking blankly at the curtains.

The door burst open. Peter, silver hair still risen from travel, appeared in the frame. “You’re a scientist.”

Charles opened his mouth to retort at the blurted assumption, but Peter had the superior reflex. “Do toasters have brains?” he added, just as quickly.

A moment of silence. Erik glanced at Charles.

“I’m a _genetic_ scientist,” he said, horrendously dumbfounded.

Peter remained, goading for a proper answer in the way he seemed to buzz almost as frantically as an alarm bell.

“Well,” continued Charles, puffing his cheeks out with tired consideration. “I mean, you could say the mechanics present in a toaster resemble a receptive system _similar_ to that of a brain—”

Peter let go of a loud breath and wiped his forehead comically. “Phew. _Great!_ Great to know, man. Good.”

Another silence ensued.

“Do you think, then, that you could”—he wiggled his fingers at them by his temples, a slight tweak to his eye—“I dunno, _tell_ the toaster’s brain to stop doing what it’s doing?”

Now, Charles was really thrown. “Peter, I don’t quite see—”

“The toaster’s on fire.”

“Oh— _Good God_.”

Charles started violently. He scrambled off the armchair and out of the room, almost tripping on their invariably and non-hazardous surfaced rug. Peter, with a nod to himself, disappeared after him.

Erik turned on the armrest to watch Charles pace down the hallway to the catastrophe. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen him waddle like a teacher at lunch called to a schoolyard fight, Peter in tow.

“The extinguisher is—” he began, but Peter returned in a flash and they collided like tackling football players. He blinked off again, leaving Charles stumbling into nothing. “Peter, _it’s under the stove!_ ”

As they escaped the picturesque framing of the study’s door, Erik couldn’t help but grin.

There was something indescribably special about seeing his spawn keep Charles on his toes. Through the habitual annoyance (because Peter was a generally annoying young man to both father and most), it _endeared_ him. Endeared him as much as it made a family out of them all.

After the years of throwing the world off-axis with their undeniably ignorant and cataclysmic process of getting together, it seemed that the responsibility of a child was the world itself throwing them back a spitefully sweet tremor of its own. A bubble in the glue of their dysfunction, silver and soapy and quick to pop and resurface at the solution. Their very own predicament, he was, much more efficient by express self-delivery than by stork.

Of course, Peter would only be _Erik_ ’s predicament if it weren’t for Charles wholeheartedly falling head-first in (quite unconditional) love with him, despite all the odd and questionable and frankly destructive things that had happened to leave his body. Though this was an established sentiment for his words, it just so happened to be a clause that unexpectedly extended to offspring.

Which left them with the catastrophic familial dynamic that they found themselves in at the present. _And_ with a toaster in flames. (Both of those things were hardly mutually exclusive.)

A theatrical surge of foam sounded downstairs. Peter screeched with laughter. Charles cursed.

“You cannot possibly think this is _funny_. _”_

“In my defence, I only barely woke up this morning thinking I’d set fire to a kitchen appliance. That’s much less than usual.”

“Just—” said Charles, with an exhale loud enough to fill the house. “I think I’ll go sit outside for a moment and contemplate a morning drink. If you’ll excuse me.”

At an ensuing quiet, Erik’s eyes fell to the seat cushion of the armchair. Dracula had flown there from Charles’ flailed throw, sitting innocently. Curious in the moment, Erik took the book and opened it. Flicked a page or two. His eyes fell to a rogue line.

_There are vampires. They are real, they are of our time, and they are here, close by, stalking us as we sleep…_

A clang came from downstairs. More foam spray. Charles protested valiantly over Peter’s obnoxious laughter.

And with the book split in one large hand, Erik shut the study door with a wave.

* * *

“Skipping dinner is sound evidence I’ve managed again to cook something unpalatable. That, or my presence evokes a desire you would rather not possess at our dining table.” Charles looked down at himself, rolling his towel into a ring around his waist. “Haven’t made my steak and kidney pie for _god_ knows how long, you know, so I’ll take it as the latter and I’ll very well take it with pride.”

Erik, preoccupied to the point of no response, sat almost catatonic atop their bed with a book in his hands. Two cups of tea—one empty, another half-drunken—sat on the bedside table. There was also a mug of coffee.

Charles walked over and inspected the infiltrating specimen of caffeine as though it had committed treason. Then, he bent over Erik and squinted at the novel.

“That’s my Dracula,” said Charles.

“So it is.”

“You’ve been reading it all afternoon, haven’t you?”

“I have.” Erik turned a page. “I might just read it all night.”

Charles, with a stretch, reached over him to close the open curtains behind their bed. His arm brushed their sideward lampshade, flittering the light around the walls. The warm skin of his stomach neared Erik’s face.

He lowered himself, then, peeking at him his blue eyes and plaster of wet hair over the novel’s edge. “I know this challenges my philosophies on the matter, but there are many wonderful things one might choose to do that triumph reading a book.”

 _Like myself_ , he added.

Erik’s eyes flicked upward. He put the novel on his own chest and cupped a hand to Charles’ wet chin. “I’m engrossed.”

Charles released a defeated breath. “You’re engrossed.”

“Yes.”

He hung his head. “What have I created?”

Erik grinned widely, sympathetically. “A monster.”

“You’re not reading Frankenstein, are you?” said Charles, bringing a finger to the cover to check.

It was a moment more of his lingering before he picked himself up in surrender. He plodded to his dresser and dropped his towel (in a very last plea for attention), searching for pyjama pants.

“The light better come off, Erik. I’m serious.”

No response.

“ _Erik_ ,” said Charles, turning fully to look at him.

“ _There are bad dreams for those who sleep unwisely_ ,” he muttered, novel at his eye line.

And Charles, standing naked at his dresser, scoffed.

* * *

“Stayed up all night reading, he did,” grumbled Charles against a cup of tea. “The light was on.”

At their dining table, Peter put the corner of a burnt piece of bread in his mouth and grimaced. Their back-up toaster was proving itself quite experimental with its ability to, well, make toast.

“He looks like he’s sleeping with his eyes open.”

“I’m not,” said Erik, gaze fixed absently at the very exciting cabinet in his line of vision.

“You very well should be,” said Charles.

Peter crunched crummily. “Comics need to be law. Books are _bor-ing_.”

Erik’s hand floated to the sugar cube dish in the middle of the table. “Dracula was quite enticing.”

And then Peter pointed his index fingers down the sides of his mouth, akin to fangs. Wiggled them around.

“Mind you,” said Charles, “this is my own book he’s become smitten with. Has my initials written on the first page and everything. Did not even ask me to borrow it.”

Peter frowned down at his bread. “I’m eating coal.”

There was silence for a moment. Erik, out of his stupor, glanced at Charles, who was sorting grumpily and adorably through his bacon. Across the table, he laced their hands together. _You enrich my knowledge everyday, Charles. Your words, your books, everything._

With a hard, raging effort, Charles sequestered a grin. “Shut up, you sap. Eat your eggs.”

Erik hovered the pepper shaker over his plate.

“And I’d like my book back.”

Dots hit the wobbly yolk. “Of course.”

* * *

“Are you aware,” said Charles, squinting at one page of the two in his hand, “that Peter has an ongoing tab at that old arcade in town? A _tab._ What could he possibly be involved in that requires a tab at an arcade?”

When he looked up and into their bedroom, Erik was in the corner, facing the wall and putting gel in his hair. They were going out for lunch, where they would eat small bowls of artful-looking pasta and Erik would change the restaurant’s radio to Charles’ favourite station and make the cutlery on other tables stand up by themselves (and Charles would swat at his hands and tell him to relent). These were sappy little things, but their eatery choices were always hits and Erik’s gestures made Charles' embarrassingly content.

The gel, for the occasion, made sense. The lack of mirror did not.

“What on earth are you doing?”

Erik turned his head briefly. “Getting ready.”

Charles looked Erik up and down—gorgeous as always, he was, even from the back ( _especially_ from the back).“Why in the corner of the room?”

“Why not?”

“There are around twenty-four different mirrors in this house for you to deliberate your appearance. Most decorative, but all functional.”

Erik smoothed over his hair. “Mirrors evoke the image of a man who is not in the room he views the mirror in.”

The sentiment thwacked Charles between the eyes. He blinked, incredibly nonplussed. “I— _Pardon?_ ”

Erik turned around, equable face otherwise plastered with affection at Charles’ flash of confusion. It was that damn twitch in his eye, the unsettled lip. Cute. He tugged at Charles’ wristwatch.

Charles, with a huff, went to him. Erik took his waist in his hands.

“Do I really need a mirror? Will it make me look better?”

Charles gave him a very incredulous look and began to order his hair—neat already, but benefiting always from his touch—with his spare fingers. “You happen to be the most attractive man I’ve ever seen in my _life_. I would bet many things on that particular answer being no.”

Erik brought his mouth to Charles’ jaw and kissed, blooming his pursed lips into something open-mouthed, until laughter caught in Charles throat at the surging passion (a wildly inappropriate precursor of their tranquil midday rendezvous) and pulled back. Erik studied his portrait: inquisitive and bright-eyed in the afternoon light, skin flushed radiantly.

“We’re meant to be out for bagels,” whispered Charles.

Erik, ignoring this, dipped his head again to his neck. A sheet of paper pressed into his face.

“Peter needs an intervention, Erik.”

His exhale fought against the page.

“I was planning to bring him home a muffin.” Charles hummed a very sarcastic hum. “I do wonder whose account he’s managed to attach to this.”

* * *

“ _Peter_!”

In the kitchen, Charles had the phone pressed to his collarbone. He toyed with the spiral wire placidly. “Peter, it’s Raven,” he called out again.” Do you want to go to the cinema? She’s willing to watch your pick and is even eager to pay your ticket. Do try to pick the latest session possible.”

Some muffled protest from Raven bled through the phone’s speaker. He waited a short moment for a response that never came.

“Peter?” resounded Charles again, instinctively looking about the immediate vicinity to no avail. He brought the phone back to his ear. “No—hang on a moment, Raven.”

He placed it on the counter and paced down the nearest hall, peeking into each room. They were empty, unless Peter was whirring at a speed so fast he managed to become chameleonic.

Charles trudged his way upstairs. “Erik?”

He went to Peter’s bedroom. The usual insignia of his presence was loud music and the erratic flash of an opening and closing door. To Charles’ surprise, the door was shut and the interior soundless.

Knocking twice and receiving no response, he warily let himself in.

He was greeted with the textbook definition of what he’d consider a small, teenage explosion: bed a mess, clothes in small junkyard piles, a smell vaguely rotten. His Pac-Man machine—which had crushed Charles’ foot when Peter and himself heaved it up the staircase without Erik’s incredibly useful assistance—blinked innocently at Charles next to his bedside table.

A shredded comic book lay like a flurry of promotional leaflets on his rug. From the state of the wall near his bed, Peter seemed to be in the middle of gluing them in some sort of mosaic. Charles stared at the display in horror.

Until an incredibly large and dark blur sped down the adjacent window outside, and he flinched. Charles crept up to the sill.

“What on _earth_...”

And again, without warning, something flashed up the glass with a quickly-disappearing smudge. Charles’ gaze rose above him in a fluster. It had to be a bloody hawk. A falcon, even.

And then Peter’s voice came muffled from the ominous overhead.

“What’s the time now?”

Charles, hurrying out of the room, almost stumbled on a glue pot.

He paced annoyedly toward the yard, and found Erik staring toward the top of the house. His wristwatch was up and visible on his arm.

“Erik,” sputtered Charles, gesturing a hand up to where he thought Peter to be. “ _Erik_.”

“Yes.”

“Your son is on my roof.”

“Yes.”

“Is this some sort of alternative father-son bonding I’ve been left unaware of?” Charles held his hands at his hips. “Could you not have managed a board game?”

“He sucks at board games,” called out Peter, peering over the edge of the roof. “He cheats at Monopoly and moves his car eight spaces ahead when we’re not looking.”

“Peter,” sputtered Charles. His sternness bloomed into an awkward note of voice. “Get—down from there. Now. Please.”

Erik squinted at his watch with pointed focus. “You had no issue having him do all sorts of perilous things under your command.”

Charles, almost scoffing at his usage of _perilous_ in such a context, bent to reach Erik’s sideward attention. “We were observing his mutation with controlled, academic testing. For science.”

“I happen to be doing the same thing. I have a theory, Charles.”

Charles shielded his eyes against the day to regard the silver mop barely visible over the roof’s structure. “I’ve already done all I can. The only hypothesis I can come up with is that he is very fast and I am very, very tired.”

Erik exhaled disappointedly, dropping the arm with his watch to his side. “ _One eighty-eighth_.”

“What?”

Peter whooped. “Told you.”

Charles looked between them incredulously. “Are you—comparing speeds?”

Erik grumbled, paying him no attention. “Once more.”

Peter, hearing this from the roof, rolled his eyes in disinterest and walked out of view. Erik, arms out at his sides and eyes closed, began to rise off the ground.

“Erik,” said Charles, head raising with him as though a flying man was as quotidian as breathing, walking, “the human eye cannot begin to process Peter’s momentum. Your times will be erred, and they won’t get better.”

No response. He levitated higher.

Charles crossed his arms. “Do you not think this is all a bit thespian?”

Peter appeared next to him in a sudden flash, dishevelling Charles’ collar. He had two banana scones on him that Charles had baked earlier: one in his mouth, and another in his hand. “What does that mean?” he said.

Charles took the spare scone from him and bit into it with spite. “It means your father is concerned with the dramatics.”

* * *

All of his theatrics had been later excused when Erik grazed his teeth at the plush of Charles’ neck, and the way he arched beneath him was in receptive approval. And pardon.

A swear. A tighter grip. Erik’s teeth sunk down. The sound Charles made was delightful.

Erik’s tongue circled the trail of his mouthful. He took the opposite side of Charles’ jaw in his hand to spread the angle wide, and bit down again.

With a slight, surprised jolt, Charles grabbed onto his wrist. He turned his face toward Erik, eyes dubious and dilated and excited and questioning all at once. A chuckle escaped between his laboured breathing. “Good god, Erik. Are you trying to draw blood?”

Erik pecked a kiss to his flush cheek. _“Lower and lower went her head_ ,” he whispered. “ _I closed my eyes in a languorous ecstasy and waited_.”

“I need my neck, you know,” said Charles. “And my lymph nodes.”

“I hardly touched your anterior triangle.”

Charles raised a devilish brow, gazed up at him with tantalising blue. “Is Dracula a physician, now?”

* * *

A distant lawn mower tried desperately to roll into action. A distant person groaned loudly. Charles, paying these sounds no such attention, hunched over his chess set on a lounge chair.

Shoes on grass approached from behind. He needn’t turn around even the slightest to know who it was.

Erik cleared his throat. _Is that Peter?_

“It is,” muttered Charles, focus remaining on his game. “I’m teaching him to do worthwhile things.”

Now at his side, Erik regarded the expanse of slightly overgrown grass before them. Peter, in a toddler-like huff, shrugged off his jacket and kicked the lawnmower. The lawnmower, much to his challenge, didn’t kick back.

Erik squinted. “ _Teaching_.”

“It’s better than him treating my good home like an olympic track.” Charles placed his hands on his thighs and frowned at the board. “There’s a cut-and-paste mural on my walls, Erik.”

“He’s doing this for free?”

“He’s doing this for a foosball table,” said Charles. “A horridly red, avant-garde foosball table, which is going to clash with my interior spectacularly. If you can’t already tell, I’m terribly excited.”

A frustrated shout accompanied another failed start of the mower. Erik, indifferent, took to the vacant lounge chair adjacent to Charles’ and reclined. One slight, innocuous look over to address him, and Charles very nearly short-circuited.

Erik was covered neck-to-toe in dark fabric, akin to some sort of rabid skier or intelligence agent or, quite possibly, someone who managed both those things at once. A fleece jacket. Long, navy trousers. Hands in his armpits. Glasses. Cap.

The sight of him made the skin near Charles’ collar prickle with uncomfortable heat. And not at all the good kind.

“This is, quite possibly, one of our last warm days of fall. You’ll have subsequent months to dress like you’ve been sent to kill me.”

“The sun is a treacherous thing.”

Charles stared at him blankly. Went over the words. “The sun— _is a treacherous thing_.”

Erik glared into the far distance, past Peter and his failing estate maintenance, toward nothing in particular. “What it does to a person is a terrible sleight, Charles.”

“There’s a rather aromatic strawberry sunscreen from my childhood back in the house, if you’d like it. Just the best. It’s what I’m using right now.”

He shook his head.

“I know you can smell it on me. And that you find it pleasant.”

Silence. Charles blinked.

“So no more sun.”

“No.”

Charles hummed. “Alright.”

Erik, returning back to him from his histrionic pondering, peered over at the chess board. “C5 to D7,” he said simply.

Staring at him a moment, Charles wiped his hands over his sun-warmed face and laughed to himself because _boy_ was Erik unbelievable. Charmingly and handsomely offbeat. Different from anyone he’d ever met and loved. Keeping him always invigorated with their exchanges.

The sound of his muffled giggling, sweet and contagious, was enough to ruin Erik’s composure. His mouth twitched.

Charles swung a leg around the lounge chair and stood up, walking to the back of Erik’s seat. With a quick movement, he took off his cap. Already discomposed from his solemnity—and refusing against his itching better nature to protest over a, well, _hat_ —a grin broke on Erik’s face.

“You are a character,” said Charles, bending over him and pecking a kiss at the dorsum of his nose. He disappeared from view again and ran a hand through Erik’s hat-flattened hair, wrapped his arms around his shoulders, pressed his own nose into the back of his head.

Down at the overgrown sea of grass, Peter had achieved a steady growl out of the lawnmower. He looked up at Erik and Charles and almost retched. _Parents._

And the lawn mower began its valorous run away from him.

* * *

With a puzzled stammer at his lip and a finger hovering a photo of a food processor, Peter believed Charles might just, finally, be malfunctioning. “ _Erik_ ,” he said with incredulous emphasis. “You are _not_ a vampire.”

Charles had been tranquilly sat in the living room with a copy of _Les Miserables_ in his hand and a kitchen appliance magazine in his lap. Peter, leant over the back of the sofa, flicked through the TV in a way that discourteously provoked Charles’ vacationing migraine. In the middle of threatening him with a VHS tape on whale evolution, Erik appeared in front of them both and squandered the light show. The TV turned off without even so much as a wave.

They stared at him. He stared back.

“What is it?” said Charles, closing his book over his finger.

Erik opened his mouth, but everything spilled out in eager, internalised ripples before the words were even able to materialise.

“Oh,” said Charles, taking it all in. His eyebrows gathered. “ _Oh_.”

As much as the ensuing proclamation—words unabashed, a stance ever-confident—had confused Charles when it came out, it certainly managed to baffled Peter. He remained leant over the back of the couch, eyes squinted and mouth open, thinking immediately about _The Lost Boys_ and how his father might look in a vampiric mullet. The image was incredibly ridiculous.

“Are you telling me mutants cannot be vampires?” said Erik.

A laugh almost choked out of Charles. “Considering that vampires are entirely fictive,” he said, handing the magazine behind him to Peter. “I’m going to say—well—no.”

Erik didn’t budge. The question remained pointed in his eyes.

“Very few mutants exist with similar abilities.” Charles deliberated, his head tilting. “Myself, as one. And Peter—”

“I’m a vampire?” blurted Peter, sparked back into awareness.

“No,” said Charles abruptly, a panicked hand up. “You already think you’re some incredibly licit track athlete. I don’t need you getting any more of these sorts of absurd ideas.”

 _The ordeal is scientific, not absurd_ , said Erik.

A smile twitched at Charle’s lips, and an incredulous, silly silence ensued. He tapped on the spine of his book.

“Vampires are dependent on human blood, yes? At least, that’s what that bloody book says.”

“Punny,” said Peter.

Erik hesitated. “Yes.”

“I refuse to believe I’m even asking this”—and Charles almost collapsed at said fact—“but do you happen to feel… that… _inclination?_ ”

Erik pursed his mouth. _No_.

“No?”

“Yes.”

Charles crossed a leg over the other, and his grin finally broke, wide and shining. “I’m offended you’d lie to me about something so ridiculous.”

“The metal,” Erik said simply.

Charles scoffed. “There is _no_ palatable connection between your mutation and blood.”

On the couch, Peter performed a balancing act over the backrest, floating the magazine atop his head. Erik, mouth clenched, flexed his fingers, which was only now slightly reflexive to him being in opposing instances—big, or incredibly small—with an insufferable academic with a hell of a sixth sense.

Charles, seeing the consternation in his face and finding it incredibly unneeded for the matter, stood. “You know, I too get like this with my set of James Bonds. I’d like to imagine that my life might have been just as interesting had I committed myself a telepathic liaison to the CIA and became a spy.”

A very sharp cackle came from Peter, and he teetered and dropped the magazine on the ground. “You’d be a terrible James Bond.”

“And _you_ ,” said Charles, bending down to retrieve it and tapping Peter over his silver head, “quite the atrocious home owner. I pity the poor soul who sells you your first home.”

Peter pouted in consideration. “I could always just kick back here, like, forever.”

“That,” muttered Charles, “sounds nightmarish.”

“Night- _what_ ish?”

“Erik.” Charles huffed, blinked, turning back to him. “Halloween is soon.” He held up the appliance magazine. “Do help me pick a new stove top before then. It seems a certain, recent pattern of destruction has worn it right out of its intended warranty.”

Peter coughed defensively.

Charles’ eyebrows gathered at Erik’s silence. “I hope you haven’t forgotten about our party. The invitations have already been sent.”

“I haven’t, Charles,” he said squarely, quietly. “You’ve been speaking of it for weeks.”

Charles stepped toward him and placed a hand to the side of his face. Always handsome and imposing, he thought Erik was, even in angst or when entertaining delusions surrounding vampirism.

_It might just be the perfect night to indulge in this new acquisition of yours._

Erik’s face lost some lines.

Charles dropped his hand.“I’ll make some tea, then,” he said, flopping the magazine on the lounge. Erik’s eyes followed his exit as he left for the kitchen.

“ _I want you to believe in things that you cannot,_ Charles,” he called out after him.

A cupboard opened. Some jovial laughing.

“My friend,” said Charles back, almost singsong, “ _it is wonderful what tricks our dreams play us!”_

Erik’s lip pulled upward. It was moments like these that he was certain, with all his being, that he was, and always had been, in love with Charles. _His_ Charles: horrendously grandiose, frustrating, and all-knowing.

All-knowing enough, it seemed, to have lines from that damn novel memorised like he did.

“Prof’s right about the vampire thing, you know,” said Peter, still hanging over the sofa. “But he’s totally lying about the stove.”

Erik, absently, took hold of the metal in Peter’s jacket zipper and pulled gently. He wobbled against the mysterious, unphysical force before falling forward onto the sofa. His Mickey Mouse socks braced the air.

* * *

That night, Charles had stumbled into their bedroom half-asleep. He found Erik staring out the window by their beaten up love seat.

“Erik,” said Charles, his voice lovably rough and hand rubbing an eye. “It’s late.”

Erik turned to face him, and his expression softened from rumination to plain endearment at how plush Charles always looked when tired. “Indeed.”

With heavy steps, Charles went to their bed and began to undress messily. “I’ve left Peter on the rug downstairs. I don’t rather know how he managed to doze off on it, but I suppose any movie we watch that isn’t Godzilla bears the unconditional, unfortunate effect of a sleeping pill.” He wiped a hand over his groggy face. “What is it I have to do tomorrow? Costume hire?”

“I assume.”

“You’re coming with, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

Charles sat on their mattress with a flop. “There’s a cafe nearby that sells these marvellous jam donuts. Raven swears by them. Says you’ll like them. We’ll have to go there afterwards.”

He stayed upright, swaying a moment. Erik had returned his stare to the window. The night was dark enough to reflect him back to himself in the glass.

“Are you coming to bed?” said Charles.

Erik remained at his reflection. “I work and think incredibly at night. Have you noticed that?”

“What’ve you to be thinking about at this time?”

He got no response to that.

Charles shrugged, then. “You’re very much intelligent in bed, is what you mean.”

Erik chuckled, crossed his arms. “No, Charles.”

“Come.”

“Give me a minute.”

But almost instantaneously, Charles groaned and fell to his pillow.

The clock starkly said to Charles that it was around four (at which he promptly lamented) when a loud thump sounded from across the room. Quite befuddled, he shot up from bed.

He stood, making his jaded way over to the love seat by the window. Erik lay asleep, sound and silent. By his hanging hand over the edge was Charles’ copy of Dracula on the floor. The obvious culprit.

 _This bloody book_ , thought Charles. He picked it up and walked to his bed frame and put it under the mattress. The Princess and the Pea be damned.

He walked back to Erik, who was frankly adonis-like in his sleep. _You are not a vampire_ , thought Charles, hoping it would reach his dreams as a letter, or words in the sky, or writing in soup. He bent down and laid on him, cushioning his head under his neck. _You are not a vampire_. _Only remotely ridiculous and, quite possibly, the best thing to have ever happened to me_. _Stop this nonsense._

Erik, waking slightly, enclosed his arms around Charles. They fit perfectly, like each was an incredibly misfit piece of a wayward puzzle.

* * *

There was a great, ambitious gathering of pumpkins around Charles’ garden table on the patio. Earlier, he had sent Erik and Peter to collect a few—which, under his strict instruction, was to _only_ be a few—for the looming Halloween party’s decor.

They came back with, approximately, half the patch.

When faced with striking disbelief and horror at the couple dozen pumpkins now surrounding their home, Peter said something about a race to see who could pick as many the fastest. Charles groaned, for he knew any race presented by Peter was a doomed one, and that Erik—stubborn and firm as a bloody wall—never declined a challenge. The sight of a metallokinetic and an individual as fast as Peter rising bedlam at a pumpkin patch must’ve also been a startling thing for onlookers to witness, and so Charles knew he would have to actually spend time calling the owners and apologising.

Regardless, they now had near-endless pumpkins to hack away at.

The particular one Charles worked on—with the worst face carved in it that Erik had ever seen—was atop the table. Sleeves drawn and bent over, he sliced a very terrible triangle into the pumpkin flesh.

A strong hand smoothened a line down his waist and toward the curve of his behind.

“If you—” Charles swiped his free hand back and, grinning, prodded Erik’s waist in a sneaky jab “—so much as _try_ to discompose me while I do this, I will be very upset.”

Erik moved next to him, bending down to scrutinise his abstract carvings with a complacent smile. “I don’t think my interrupting would change much of the quality.”

“Very rude.”

Erik stood again and made his way to a nearby patio chair, moving the pumpkin from the seat and taking its place. Charles, his knife caught awkwardly and needing assistance, looked up. He sighed.

Almost completely innocent in his regular attire, Erik donned the dark velvet vampire cloak they had hired from the costume store some days prior. With all the traditional detailing (the popped collar, red in-lining), it was perfectly decadent and authentic for a Halloween party.

Incredibly ridiculous, however, for any other very normal day.

“The store charges for dry cleaning, Erik,” said Charles. “I had to sign insurance.”

The wedged knife jutted out of the pumpkin and onto the table. “I quite like it,” said Erik.

“I do think you look excellent, you know. You just needn’t wear it _now_.”

Erik grinned widely, then, crossing his arms. “I think your protest, Charles, is really because I’m seducing you out of focus.”

“ _Please_.” Charles returned the knife to the pumpkin with a tut. “You act like I’ve never seen you naked.”

They were quiet a moment while he tried to carve another line. A slight wind blew gently.

“How are you certain you’re telepathic?” said Erik.

“Well that’s a question.”

“I mean—” Erik shifted on the seat, the cape caught beneath him, and put a thoughtful leg over the other “—how do you not know I am just as telepathic?”

Charles stood up straight. “ _Erik_ ,” he said, intonation slow and smile bright with incredulity, “do you often speak with others through the mind?”

_I speak with you._

“Very different,” said Charles. “I receive all thoughts directed my way in private submission.” He prodded the pumpkin with nonchalance. “I would very much like to think with all my rambling that you know this already.”

Erik’s grin returned, wide and shark-like. _Could I be telepathic with an extraordinary and exclusionary tuning to yourself?_

A small piece of pumpkin flopped out of a carved shape, and Charles hummed. “That would certainly be something.”

Erik left his seat, then, and sauntered over. He gripped Charle’s waist, and he spun around to him at the touch. Erik kissed at the side of his neck with a couple of small, insistent pecks. His love bite—marked no more than a week prior—was there and bruised, fading from its purple stamp into other hues.

“That would make us soulmates,” said Erik.

Charles raised an eyebrow. “Would it, now?”

“Yes.”

A leaf floated to Erik’s auburn hair, and Charles brought a delicate finger to push it off. “I expect us to grow old together, you know. Retire to a Greek island. Live the rest of our days like this, with one another. No pumpkin carving.” The thought of Erik and himself sitting on a beach surrounded by pumpkins and all their associative auras of fall was incredibly unnerving and equally humorous, and it broke Charles into a laugh. “Just don’t push me to my wit’s end before then. I might just change my mind.”

“I won’t grow old,” said Erik, grinning beautifully. Charles swooned.

“ _Won’t_ you.”

“Vampires are immortal.”

“Of course.”

Erik brought his mouth back to Charles’ jaw and they decidedly stayed like that for the moment. His tender clutch and cape comforted them both against the soft bite of the breeze. Leaves flurried. The pumpkin of Charles’ design sat with its wonky eye and teeth on proud display.

“Will Peter be invited to our Greek island?” teased Erik, quite out-of-the-blue.

Charles started. “Erik, he’s already marking my house _his own_ with that rather inventive eye of his.” He scoffed. “He may as well be my next of kin.”

“Inventive?”

“Yes.” Charles gazed at him with a lick of austerity. “Imaginative may be the better word. I do wonder where he gets it from.”

“I’d say that you are quite impressionable on him, Charles.”

“And you,” said Charles, bringing his warm mouth to the skin preceding Erik’s ear, “are parading yourself around the estate with this incredibly excessive cloak. If that doesn’t require some sort of _imagination_ , then, quite frankly, I don’t know what does.”

Erik manoeuvred his head away from Charles and placed himself to his plush lips, kissing him gently. “I’m wearing this cloak because I am a vampire.”

And Charles’ eyes—pupils of his acclimated to their intimacy, but still, to the day, flailing with a hint of wildness at their love—rolled. His hair brushed atop his forehead at the wind. “Certainly. And the rest of these pumpkins are going to up and carve themselves.”

They stared at each other, close and within embrace. A perfect moment.

“Erik,” said Charles. “I’m saying I very much need your help shaping the faces of the rest of these pumpkins.”

* * *

Erik, surprisingly, carved a mean pumpkin.

Come halloween night, the mansion was amply decorated for their festivities. Candles and apples, scatterings of dried leaves from the yard, hardcover horror classics displayed and standing at random points in the living room (with _Do Not Touch!_ cards in accompaniment). An ABBA album played on a record player. The millions of pumpkins—some delicately incised, some shoddy, and some with what seemed to be those aliens from Space Invaders—added their familial spirit.

Marilyn Munroes and zoo-keepers and famous athletes stood around. People were eating pumpkin-shaped cookies that Charles may-or-may-not have sliced from a log of cookie dough and thrown at Peter in a panicked flurry to put in the oven. The atmosphere was pleasantly congregational, and the party, very early, presented success. In all honesty, most of Charles’ events—meticulously planned and incredibly stressed—usually did.

Erik, cloak joined with the remainder of the hired outfit, presented himself as Dracula. Raven had painted red lipstick on the side of his mouth, which was in lieu of the fake blood Charles had definitely made him forget to buy when he had the chance. It seemed the urgent search for jam-filled baked goods the day of their costume hire forfeited his purchase of false teeth, too, which Erik realised now was just _too_ coincidental to be a well-meaning accident.

Peter, though not intending to appear like it, was a damp towel. He stood amongst the partygoers, blue cap holding down his grey hair, begrudgingly sour and sulking because Charles had appointed him in charge of the first round of hors d’oeuvres, big platter and all, which was, just, _not cool._

Hank, who had been eying the silver and its treats for a good couple of minutes, came up to him. “I’ll have one of those.”

Peter groaned. “Dude, please, just take the whole thing. I need to use the bathroom.”

Hank raised an eyebrow at his outfit. “Who are you supposed to be?”

“Generic Baseballer No. Nine," he said, languidly lifting the baseball bat in his other hand.

“Oh.”

“I wanted to be Road Runner, but Charles said something about _incentive_ , or whatever, which meant I couldn’t.” Peter rolled his eyes. “I dunno. He’s weird.”

Hank chuckled. It hardly struck him as odd that Charles would go to great lengths to prevent Peter from leaving tire marks around the house. Aside from Erik, it was just about all he complained about when they were collaborating on his speed tests. Something about a shredded antiquated rug and incessant buzzing around like a mosquito. And having the throbbing feel of a migraine ironically memorised.

Peter threw the bat on a nearby couch, stuffed an hors d’oeuvre in his mouth, and frowned. “Gross,” he remarked, like he was otherwise clueless to what salmon looked or tasted like when in the fanciful manner of finger food. Giving Hank a once-over, he frowned with a different confusion. “The heck are _you_?”

Hank, with slabs of terrible sideburns, a fleecy grey wig, a moustache, and covered in a mishmash of stick-and-paste strips of hair, understood that this was a very valid question.

Alex, chatting nearby and overhearing, came over jollily with a cup in one hand and clapped Hank’s shoulder with the other. “A damn mess, is what he is.”

Hank scoffed. “Right. Because _I’m_ the one dressed in striped circus latex.”

Alex looked down at himself. He very much was.

“Hey—I am a candy cane, and a very good one at that.”

“It’s Halloween.”

“And Christmas is right around the corner.” Alex held up his hands like what he was about to say was trademarked property. “Embrace the holidays, man.”

Peter, still frowning, remained perplexed at Hank’s display. He slowly spun the platter on his hand in contemplation, salmon crackers moving left and right. What was this elusive semblance of a human ahead of him? Man? Animal? Bigfoot seemed pretty close—Peter had coincidentally seen a documentary some days prior and knew all about the topic. Even though he thought the Sasquatch in their depiction seemed less like a legend out of hiding and more like a five-foot-nine man in a blanket of ratty costume wigs, he definitely saw a likeness.

A better bet was one of the presidents, though Peter wasn’t quite sure which one. He had been told his father knew quite a lot about presidents, but decidedly never took it too seriously when Charles had promptly puffed his cheeks out like he was stifling a rude laugh. His brain ticked.

“You’re a breed of weird British dog,” said Peter suddenly, snapping a finger at Hank.

Hank sighed. “Werewolf Albert Einstein.”

“Oh.” Peter tilted his head at him until it clicked. “ _Oh_.”

Charles had been getting ready—or rather, mysteriously moping about upstairs—for the good beginning portion of the party. If Erik was the malefactor of crimes surrounding pure dramatics, then Charles was just as much his accomplice. After a small while of stalking about, convincing others of his vampiric tendencies, Erik found himself quite lost without him there and by his side.

“I should go up,” he said. He had settled near a bookshelf with Raven, who had taken a bowl of peppermints in one hand and was downing them with her wine.

She polished off the rest of her glass. “He’s probably just”—she thought to the ceiling for a moment—“stuck getting into his costume. You know how he is with zippers.”

“I would be a particular help to a zipper.”

“And no particular help in getting me more drinks.” She switched glasses with him. Erik barely noticed.

“Did he say what he was going as?”

“No,” she said. “Don’t you know?”

His teeth clenched. “No.”

Raven shrugged. “Charles likes surprises. Incredibly lame surprises.” Her eyes widened. “Maybe he’s a clown. God, that would be funny. Where’s his camera?”

“I despise clowns,” said Erik, almost sulking.

Eventually, Charles descended the stairs with cheerful, enigmatic steps, finally ready to address his party. And his outfit was, in no way, clown-like.

Though they had gone together to the hire store—all _three_ of them went, actually, which would usually account for impending and astronomical disaster but otherwise went moderately well—Charles had made a great deal to find his and Erik’s costumes separately. Under the guise of seeking some illegitimate-sounding ‘personal fitting consultation’, Charles had left Erik to supervise Peter around the store and refuse hire of any speed-adjacent costume choices. It happened to be a fitting of which he neglected to show either of them, and when Erik noticed the only shop assistant filing her nails behind the counter, seemingly undisturbed in the first place, he knew something was up.

“He’d say yes to _Star Olympic Sprinter_ ,” Peter had said amongst the racks. “This one’s got a British flag on the sleeve. He’s a British Star Track Athlete. That’s a winner.”

Erik saw Charles, across the store, fold something vague over his arm. “No,” he said soundly, eyes suspicious.

Looking back, there seemed no logical reason why Charles chose to be so secretive about his ensemble when Erik paraded his around the house brazenly. Unless, of course, it had something to do with Erik in the first place.

With Erik staring up at him completely overwrought, mouth apart, warmth trailing up the high neck of his shirt, this was definitely the case.

It was the billowy sleeves and the lavish corset loose with defeat, trendy balloon trousers, his best dress loafers. His hair exquisitely placed to one side. His eyes, sharp like crystals. A complacent grin—and Erik was stuck. Stuck, incredibly, in a stupor. Raven just scoffed against her glass.

“Trust _him_ to be the prince,” she said. “God, he’s got the biggest head.”

“Yes,” said Erik, barely able to affirm. “Quite.”

Their stares remained on each other. Neither moved. Charles, in all his beauty, raised an eyebrow. Erik almost solidified whole.

”Excuse me,” he sputtered, coughing himself out of his transfixion.

Raven, as a very desolate Peter and his new platter of avocado hors d’oeuvres floated in her line of view, waved an absent and relieving hand. Erik promptly walked off.

Charles’ eyes followed him curiously. The light edges of his thoughts swiped past with him. _Gorgeous. Fuck. Charles. He’s—_

“Prof,” called out Alex, making his way with Hank to the stairs. He spun around in exhibition. “Let’s settle this. Am I overdressed?”

Charles gave him and his illusionist print a once-over. “In no way,” he said cordially. “Love the colours. Should I expect to see this attire again at our Christmas dinner?”

“You _should_ ,” said Alex to Charles, but very pointedly to Hank.

Charles, hands behind his back, shifted his attention to him. “Good evening, Hank.”

“Professor.”

Promptly, Charles furrowed his brows. Attempting to register the costume he laid eyes on morphed his amiability into absolute confusion. “If you don’t mind my asking, just _who_ are you supposed to be?”

And Alex, drink teetering in his hand, laughed out loud.

Later, when Peter had managed to pawn off the near-empty platter of the third round of hors d’oeuvres to Raven, Charles sauntered up to her with great curiosity and just a tad bit of his signature Xavier smugness.

“You,” began Charles, addressing her outfit, “could be anything your heart desires, and yet you choose that of a particularly ordinary human in a terrible zebra-printed dress.”

Raven, with her best _you dick_ glower, morphed into his mirror-image. “How’s this?” she said, picking at the replication of his bubbled sleeves. “I’m the world’s biggest asshole, now.”

“Har-har,” said Charles monotonously. “Bravo, Houdini.”

Raven, in a smooth transition, returned to herself in her zebra dress. She took a piece of the remaining food from the platter, crunched. “You and Erik fighting over chess again?”

Charles frowned. “Why would you think that?”

“He’s snuck, like, a dozen glances over since you came up to me.” She widened her eyes with severity. “A dozen in thirty seconds is a lot, Charles.”

He turned inconspicuously at Raven’s gesture behind him. In an armchair across the room, Erik seemed to be half-listening to Hank ramble on about something. His eyes flicked toward them and, noticing their stares, quickly returned to the conversation. Strange.

“ _We_ ,” said Charles, holding the note as he spun around back to Raven, “are not fighting.”

“He’s angry you kept your costume from him, actually.”

Charles, caught incredibly off guard, stammered into question. “I—what on earth gave you that impression?”

“He told me.”

“He did not.”

“He did too.”

Raven looked at him, unrelenting. Charles scoffed and outstretched his balloon-y arms, flashed at her a face that screamed _I am, now, officially at my wit’s end_. “Well, it was meant to be a bloody surprise!”

Like a sibling in the presence of another sibling’s terrible decisions, Raven tutted her eyebrows. Charles pointed his stare.

“You don’t know who I am, do you?”

“I’m not stupid,” she said, chewing on another hors d’oeuvre offendedly. “ _His Royal Highness_ , you are.”

Charles blinked like one of those incredibly naive movie princes who get stuck on stubborn horses in deep lakes. This, obviously, didn’t help his case. He hung his head. Pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m not.”

“Moira’s a princess,” said Raven.

“Moira’s a very subdued attempt at Queen Mary of Scots.”

She shrugged. “The point is: Erik’s sitting there, sulking. Probably thinks you’ve gone off in a couple’s costume with someone else and didn’t tell him.” Her eyes narrowed cynically. “ _Purposefully_ didn’t tell him.”

Charles tutted. “You’re almost as terribly dramatic as he is.”

“I’m more stylish.”

He looked over at Erik again. Hank seemed to be answering a question he had posed in an attempt to be reciprocally conversational for once, and Erik was receiving the answer, looking vaguely in pain.

“We’re quite fine,” said Charles. “I think he’s just—” he huffed a breath, deciding how to say it “—acting. He’s pretending. I’m just playing along.”

Raven put yet another hors d’oeuvre in her mouth and contemplated. Her chewing soured. “Oh, god.”

“What?”

“Gross, Charles. _No_.”

“What is it?”

“You’re roleplaying _._ At your own party?”

He looked around. “Is that not what you do on Halloween?”

She stared at him. Chewed. His confusion lingered around her words until his eyes shot open and he stammered.

Raven shoved the platter at him abruptly. “I don’t want to know. I really don’t. I’d rather do anything else. Maybe even listen to Hank recite his list of the ninety best scientists of all time, ordered achievements and all.”

Charles scrambled to keep the remaining pieces of food from flying off. “I suppose like Erik is doing now.”

Raven leaned around him, and her earrings dangled. “No. His cheek’s twitching and that decorative spoon near Hank’s head is swaying. It’s definitely about that chemical engineering conspiracy he found last week. Even _I_ can’t sit through that.”

When the party had calmed, and what was left of the congregation were loud, humorous, discussions—like Peter explaining to Raven, Alex, and Hank that, if they all tried hard enough, they could assemble a human-sized record player with himself acting as the turntable mechanism (and Alex burning in the ridges of the mega-vinyl)—Charles went to find Erik.

He was in the empty room over, wiping his thumb over the lipstick blood at his mouth in a decorative mirror. His black cape and tall collar framed him like the most imposing guest that could possibly attend a Halloween party, but, wiping away at his lip, Charles couldn’t see him as anything else but Erik. Incredibly silly in all his gravitas.

“I do remember reading somewhere that vampires can’t use mirrors.”

Erik, noticing him in the mirror, turned around. At the sight of Charles, _all_ of Charles, he melted into a tender smile.

Charles waltzed up to him, placing a hand at his cheek, thumbing his own finger at the red stain at his mouth and laughing softly. “Have you had your lips on someone else?”

Erik brought his hand up, too. “You know I would never.”

“Do you like my costume?”

“Infinitely.”

“And you _do_ know who I am, right?” A note of urgency sharpened Charles’ voice. “Raven’s gone around saying I’m some estranged member of the royal family, which is sorely ruining the intended effect.”

“Well,” said Erik, placing a plush kiss to the heel of Charles’ hand, “you’re an incredibly gorgeous damsel.”

He waited a moment in anticipation, holding onto the potential addendum of words. Erik raised an eyebrow.

“Erik,” said Charles, quite deadpan, letting go of his face. “ _Erik_.”

“Yes.”

“I’m _Mina_.”

He stood back, and properly considered Charles’ outfit. Looked up and down. Up and down.

“Erik—”

“I see it,” he said, grinning too wide and too bright way too fast. “You’re right. I see it.”

“You’re kidding.” Charles blinked at him, dumbfounded and almost, definitely offended. “I was so excited to—bloody _surprise_ you. I thought you very well knew who I was the moment you saw me on those stairs.”

Erik grabbed him by the waist, the very edges of his beguiling corset, and pulled him close, staring intensely into his eyes as vampires often did. _I did know._ _My Charles. Beautiful in every way. Mine forever._

Charles ran a thumb on the velveteen texture of Erik’s collar. “I do remember Mina being cured by the end of the book.”

Erik gave a low, loving laugh. “We can have liberties.”

“Liberties?” said Charles, an eyebrow raised. “You did not just give me absolute hell for the past few weeks to boast here and now about these supposed _liberties_ we may have. I refuse to hear it.”

Finding his way under the unsecured corset, Erik met his fingers to the warm, delicate skin of Charles’ hips. “Perhaps it is in your best interest to prevent me from speaking any further of it, then.”

Charles stared at him, eyes wide and gorgeously blue and striking.

“I’m still offended you didn’t know who I am.”

And the sentiment didn’t last any longer than a second, considering he promptly surged and kissed Erik, hands landing on the sides of his face and clutching. Erik gripped tightly at his waist in pleasurable squeezes, guiding him in staggered steps toward the nearby window sill, until Charles could feel the press of cold glass against the shirt on his back, and the edge of the sill against the back of his thighs. He brought his hands behind Erik’s head and thumbed into the back of one ear and felt his lips roughen.

Charles wiped himself away with the turn of his face, laughing sweetly and happily, breathing deeply. Erik continued down his warm, red cheek to his jaw.

“You know, ” he said lowly. “Something of your Mina costume is missing. Something defining.”

Charles held onto Erik’s arms, the side of his face still pressed against him. “What?”

Erik pulled back from him and used a finger to turn his face toward the opposite side. He hovered a moment. “Ah.”

Charles chuckled. “What _is_ it, Erik?”

He thumbed over the disappearing bruise of his love bite—hardly a colour, hardly even the ghost of a blemish—just at the base of Charles’ neck.

“The mark of the vampire,” he said. “It’s barely there.”

“Oh.” Charles, with a loving grin, rolled his eyes. “Yes, well, I’m sort of glad, you know. The vampire bite is, more traditionally, two singular holes. I wouldn’t even want to imagine the sorts of questions I’d get if it was quite apparent a whole _human_ mouth had been on me.”

Erik stroked the edge of his neck, where his teeth had once dug for purchase. “It would have been beautiful.”

Charles withdrew from his touch to face him. They stared at each other. Breathing into activity, into what the opposed breathed out. Eyes deep and pupils skittering.

“Come on,” said Erik at last.

“Come on what?” said Charles.

Erik kissed him again, with two quick pecks. “Everyone’s preoccupied.”

Charles, understanding quickly, scoffed. “You cannot be serious.”

And Erik, holding that beautiful head of his between his large hands, began to kiss him again and again, from the side of his mouth down to the stretch beneath his chin, right back to the near-clean spot of the bite he had left on him not that long ago. “We need to fix your costume.”

“I can’t just leave my party,” said Charles. “What sort of a host would that make me?”

Erik pulled away, smacking a needy kiss to Charles’ parted lips. “A good one, regardless. You know you throw the most excellent functions.”

“And what if someone comes looking for us? Finds us?”

Erik, usually the king of last-minute, sporadic, cataclysmic solution, didn’t offer anything to this. He had his mouth already on Charles’ neck again, sucking lightly, teeth grazing threateningly, fingers fumbling into his costume corset and around the waistband of his trousers, and, in all fairness, he really couldn’t begin to offer anything at all. He wasn’t planning on letting go, either.

Charles laced an ardent hand into Erik’s hair. Tried hard to resist for the sake of this bloody party. Tried. _Really_ tried.

And, ultimately—with Erik’s wandering hands edging dangerously close to their destination—gave up.

A chorus of confused exclamations came from the other room. Charles, attempting to keep his mind grounded for one last relentless moment, sorted through the sounds for what seemed like Hank’s voice.

 _Hank_ , said Charles, _would you mind keeping guests from the upstairs portion of the house for approximately twenty minutes?_

“Oh, god,” said Hank in the distance, painfully and very well audibly.

“What’s with the complaining?” screeched Peter. “Alright, fine, Squatchy. _You_ get first pick of the vinyl we choose to make. Alex, don’t look at me like that, man, I mean, _he’s_ the one moaning about it, and—”

Charles pried Erik off him, sealing him for the moment with a quick kiss. He left him and strode quite quickly toward the stairs.

Almost floating, cape sprawled dark and billowing like the _real_ Dracula, Erik enthusiastically followed.

When they returned to the congregation, they were disheveled in a way that would have barely let much go if Charles’ hadn’t been flushed to the point of looking quite feverish, and Erik wasn’t otherwise sweating his vampiric countenance back to his regular self.

Everyone else, now at the end of the night, was making vague attempts to clean up; polishing off the scant bowls of candy, drinking the ends of bottles, making Charles’ old camera light up like a thunderstorm in the corner of the room.

Everyone else except Peter, hollering with his bat readied at Alex, who had a bunch of apples falling out of his arms.

Hank, a drink in his hand, was trying desperately to shield Peter (not in protection, but in reprimand) from the hellfire of fruit that was about to rain on them both. It seemed he was trying to do so sternly—obviously to prevent the possible, apocalyptic damage that would occur to Charles’ living room, and the never-ending earful he’d earn because of it—but was laughing at Alex, who was threatening to lob the fruit in his hand through his head. Raven, looking at a selection of baby photographs with Moira nearby, had leaned past her and was merrily encouraging Alex to do just that. Fleetwood Mac played on the turntable.

 _Bat down, if you’d be so kind_ , said Charles to Peter.

Frozen as though caught by an old sheriff (and Charles kept in mind to merrily suggest to him _Renowned Cowboy Hero_ for next year’s Halloween if this was all the character was to do), Peter raised both hands.

Alex, with an apple in his high fist, looked over past Hank. He laughed nervously. “I wasn’t— _really_ gonna throw it.”

Hank turned to them, looking quite like a very surprised lion. “And, you know, I wasn’t going to _let him_ throw it.”

Charles regarded Erik. “How on earth did I not pick up on a baseball player being destructive?”

Erik tipped his head, considering. “Rather inconspicuous, minus the bat.”

“I didn’t even know he owned a bat.”

Erik took a finger to Charles’ forehead to sort his disarrayed hair. Then, he brushed a finger over the fresh set of teeth—red, tender, glistening—that lay just under his jaw on the opposite side of the last. “It’s _Peter_ , Charles.”

He laughed, bringing his hand to Erik’s, furrowing his brows. “Good god, Erik. Careful, there. It’s still quite sore.”

From the side, Raven clicked her fingers at them. “ _Hey_. Will we be seeing more of the Count and the Crown, now? The party’s almost over and there hasn’t even been a royal address yet.”

Erik raised a teasing eyebrow at Charles. _The Crown_ , he said, and Charles pursed his lips.

“I’m not a prince,” he said, exhaling in final, grand defeat.

“What?” blurted Alex, who had taken a bite of the apple in his hand. “Who’re you meant to be then? A pirate?”

“No,” added Hank. He crossed his arms, squinting, sarcastic and showy. “It’s definitely some sort of court jester.”

“It _is_ very princely, Charles,” said Moira, photo album in hand.

Charles looked between all of them. He raised his arms and dropped them in an incredulous, vaguely irritated huff. “This is all quite unfair. How is it that _Dracula_ is undoubtedly Dracula, but Mina—who is of equal importance, mind you, I suppose none of you have even read the book—is a prince, and a pirate, and a bloody—”

“A pirate?” said Peter, turning to them with his bat over his shoulder. “I thought you were Shakespeare.”

Charles stood there, absolutely stunned. He might as well have been electrocuted. He probably would have looked less stupefied.

“Do you _know_ what Shakespeare looks like, Peter?”

Peter stared at him, shrugged. “I just figured, you know… Something like that.”

“Shakespeare,” repeated Charles in a whisper, and it looked very much like he was considering the scope of many decisions—his life decisions—that led up to enduring such a pivotal moment in his life: watching his stepson (because that’s what Peter was; in his life forever, joined at the elbow with Erik, and Charles, admittedly, had been unknowingly conditioning himself for a lifetime with the both of them for a while) confuse the dress of one fictional character for the dress of an author of some others. And, as Charles had done frequently to him, Erik looked on with the acute and adoring and besotted grin of someone knowingly committed to a person of unbelievably high dramatics.

Charles and Erik: truly made for each other, they were. Because when one performed a show, the other—though maybe first accompanied by the instinctive glint of exasperation—could provide no more than watchful eyes, interest, and, eventually, the most absorbent outpour of love.

Even on Halloween, when all that had occurred was an otherwise flimsy, obscure costume being horrendously undermined.

“ _Though sympathy alone can’t alter facts_ ,” whispered Erik to Charles, and he gave a quick kiss to his pinkish face, “ _it can help to make them more bearable._ ”

He stalked over, then, to the table of depleting deserts, where four of his perfectly carved pumpkins looked up at him.

 _Come have a biscuit,_ said Erik.

With a compliant huff, Charles felt around for the sore spot on his neck and made his way over. He also, in that small journey there, made himself a promise: to stick to reading contemporaries for the remainder of that year.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy (very late) Halloween, and (now) have a very merry holidays!


End file.
